gazed past Tess wistfully.
During the silence that stretched between them, Tess thought about her parents and Meredith and the terrible call that had come in the middle of the night. She’d been nineteen, a year out of high school, ready for college after taking a year out to work at a bookstore. She’d been poised to embark on a life that had seemed nearly perfect—too perfect, she reminded herself. Then suddenly the people she’d loved most in the world were gone. Mom. Dad. Meredith. And even Reed.
Reed McKenna, her first real love, her first lover. He’d walked out on her mere days before she’d lost her family in the accident. Then she’d lost him all over again when she stumbled over her sister’s diary. Eight long years, and the loss and betrayal still hurt.
“Oh, come on,” Selena prodded, dragging Tess from the depths of her dark memories. “Enough of this gloom and doom. We’re supposed to be on vacation, remember? Two young women, footloose and fancy-free for two whole weeks on an island paradise.”
Tess summoned her best face. “That’s us.” She lifted her glass again. “To Selena and Tess, look out Grand Cayman!” And to forgiving and forgetting, she added to herself. If it was time for a new beginning with her only living relative, surely it was time to let go of the painful past.
“To family.” Selena’s smile seemed as forced as Tess’s.
They touched glasses, but before they could drink, Tess noticed their waiter approaching again. “Perhaps we should look at the menu now,” she suggested.
“Excuse me,” the waiter said. “But there is a phone call in the lobby for Miss Elliot.”
“For me?” the cousins asked simultaneously, and then looked at each other and laughed.
“I doubt it could be for me,” Tess said. “My manager has strict instructions that unless the store burns down with the insurance policy inside, I’m not to be disturbed.”
Selena groaned and pushed back her chair.
“Wait a minute, I bet it’s the rental-car company,” Tess suggested, recalling the mix-up at the airport that had caused an hour’s delay getting a car. “I can go talk to them if you’d like.” But when she started to get up, Selena stopped her.
“No, you stay put,” she insisted. “It’s probably my office. They don’t know the meaning of the word vacation. Order an appetizer, some shrimp or something. I won’t be a minute.” Before Tess could say more, Selena was hurrying away from the table.
As she watched her cousin leave, she noticed a man at the bar across the room watching her, as well. Tess couldn’t blame him. Selena was an attractive woman.
Like Tess, Selena was tall—almost five nine—and trim. It occurred to Tess as she watched her cousin disappear into the lobby that she’d never seen Selena looking more fit. She’d lost at least ten pounds, Tess figured, remembering how grief could take a toll.
Today, dressed in a bright pink sundress and jaunty straw hat, Selena looked pretty as a picture. She’d turned heads from the moment they’d stepped off the plane in Georgetown. Like Tess, Selena wore her hair past her shoulders. But while Tess’s was straight and blunt cut, Selena wore springy curls and she’d lightened the dark brown that they’d both inherited from their mothers’ side of the family to an attractive, sun-kissed, ash blond.
Selena was not only attractive, but an independent and successful businesswoman. Tess wasn’t exactly sure just what kind of business Selena was engaged in, but whatever it was, her cousin had to be doing well, as evidenced by this trip.
Beautiful, successful, confident—all those adjectives could rightly be used to describe her only cousin, Tess told herself. Surely the old jealousy that had kept Selena from allowing a relationship to bloom between them could at last be put to rest.
“Well, here’s to you, Selena,” Tess murmured as she brought her glass to her lips again and took another sip. “To the future.”
* * *
THE PERSISTENCE of the breakers pounding the rocks below the balcony restaurant had nothing on the unrelenting memories pummeling Reed McKenna as he sat transfixed, watching Tess Elliot where she sat at her table across the room.
She was even more beautiful than the indelible image he carried in his memory. If she had changed at all, it was only for the better. She was still startlingly attractive. Her smile was still a cover girl’s. Her hair still long, thick and glossy brown. Even from this distance, he could tell that her olive skin still glowed with good health, as though she’d just stepped off one of her beloved Colorado mountain trails.
When she’d walked in, wearing the gauzy yellow sundress, he couldn’t help noticing that her long legs were still slim and well toned, and that she still moved like a thoroughbred.
When she’d laughed, the sound had floated to him on a breeze and sparked what few memories hadn’t already been stirred to life by the sudden sight of her. Tess, his mind whispered, what kind of fool would ever let you go?
“Can I get you another beer, sir?” the bartender asked, interrupting Reed’s musings.
He nodded, resisting the temptation to ask the bartender to bring him a pack of Camels.
Out of the corner of his eye, Reed saw the waiter deliver a message to Selena Elliot. When she stood up and walked out of the dining room, Reed hoped that Tess wouldn’t follow.
Selena left the dining room alone, and Reed decided with grim satisfaction that perhaps this wasn’t going to be as difficult as he’d first thought. Maybe he wouldn’t have to inflict himself on Tess after all.
That was the way he wanted it, wasn’t it? Of course, he reminded himself. The memories he’d harbored, the fantasies he’d spun about his young love, were just that: fantasies and nothing more.
But despite that blunt realization, before he left the bar, he couldn’t resist a last look over his shoulder at the woman who’d once held his young heart, before it had turned cold. And captured his imagination, before it had become so jaded.
Her eyes met his for barely a second and he foolishly held his breath, wondering if she recognized him. When it appeared she hadn’t, a strange mix of disappointment and relief settled heavily in his chest.
* * *
WHEN THE SHIMMERING crystal bowl of chilled shrimp arrived, Tess began to wonder what was keeping Selena. After five minutes more, she beckoned their waiter. “Excuse me, but could you direct me to the phone where my cousin took her phone call?”
“Of course,” the young man agreed. “Right this way.”
The bar was beginning to fill and the waiter and Tess had to weave their way past a group gathered around a table where a lively game of dominoes was in progress.
Once in the lobby, the young man pointed to a bank of courtesy phones on the wall. From where she stood, Tess could already see that Selena was not in the lobby.
“Perhaps she had the call transferred to our room,” Tess suggested. “I think I’ll go check. If she comes back before I do, will you tell her where I’ve gone?”
The waiter smiled and nodded.
